


it was supposed to be a cycle

by wyrdsworth



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cycling, F/F, Gen, Minor Violence, Solarpunk, cursing as substitute for character depth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 13:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14620023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrdsworth/pseuds/wyrdsworth
Summary: There's a little bit of joy to be found in everyone's work day--even when you're late. Even when it hasn't rained in years, you're thirsty and you're late and you get accosted by some moron trying to steal the package you're delivering.(Small solarpunkish story for the Solarpunk Exchange)





	it was supposed to be a cycle

It was the driest, hottest winter on record, and Julia Cho was riding faster than she ever had before. It was like something was leaning on her muscles, cheering her forward, faster and faster through the twin scents of hot tar and black coffee. Not rich enough for her blood. She couldn't stop chasing the smell of rain; petrichor and trees and anarchy, the three heartbeats that keep her going, keep her pumping.

RANGI paid well, but not as well as other jobs she was overqualified for. (This was still late capitalism after all—what was she going to do, not work two jobs trying to pay off a student loan she'd been co-erced into as a literal child?) But RANGI was different. And today was different too—she had a good feeling about this run.

Red LEDs under the plastic grit blinked an ominous 'X' in her lane. Fuck. Typical of North Courtenay to be closed today, of all days—time to try a different tack. She glanced around, looking out for cars, and pulled a hard 180. The sun was beating down. It had never done this when she was a child, that's what rankled the most. When she'd been a kid, they had maybe a week of summer, tops—the other 358 days of the year it bucketed down, gale-force winds, grey skies as far as the eye could see. Now she saw the sun more than the clouds; occasionally there was a freak storm, dry as a bone, and then it was back to this freaky perpetual heat. The sun bleached everything it touched. Forests became beaches, first drowned and then choked by waves of pastel plastic. Rivers churned, viscous and olive with algae bloom. God, she missed green.

Her city had always been a bit bullshit and unsafe for cycling. The narrow alleys twisted from blind corners into rushing traffic and there was always one person willing to run a red in exchange for a few extra seconds. So, instead of being pissed when someone's brand-new electric vehicle nearly clipped her, she took advantage. Like a cowboy lassoing a bull, she pulled the chain magnet free, swung it experimentally a few times, then let fly. It stuck true; she just had time to crank up the electromagnet before the slack went tight. Suddenly she was really flying, feet off the pedals, wind cracking her hair, a big dumb grin on her face. This was living.

A sharp whistle pierced through the traffic noise. "Hey! Julia!"  
The car slowed to take a corner, and Julia braked to follow; as she did, Will came up alongside. They were grinning that gaptooth smile that could cure any bad mood. "Today's the big job?"  
She laughed. "Yeah, sure is. Race you to the top of Tangi Te Keo?"  
Will's eyes sparkled. "Looks like today you get to rain on everyone's parade!"  
Julia should have seen that coming. What she also should've seen was what Will had done to their bike. "You _genius_. What is _that_?"  
Their smile broadened. "Wait and see!" Their eyes flickered up to the amber lights as Julia released the electromagnet, kicked the pedals into position. "Let's go on green."  
Their 'bike' was an entirely different machine than last time, this one Frankensteined out of rechargable batteries and a rats' nests of wires, with dials and buttons duct-taped to the handlebars and a motor under the seat. Whatever it could do, Julia wasn't sure she wanted to find out. Wait, no, exactly the opposite of that.

Green.

It broke over her like a wave, and she breathed in, leaned hard on the pedals, and accelerated like she was the plummeting level of species diversity. Oh, she'd regret this when she got thirsty and the cost to get rehydrated came back to bite her—but maybe not if she did well today. There was nothing like this, not under all the stars, not in all the oceans. Like a promise made long ago and broken so often, and paying in beautiful blood for its reparation. She would ride like the wind, happy, soaring; it lifted her and she spread her arms wide to catch it. This was living. This was life.

She chased the wind with them for streets and streets, chasing curves and drawn ever onwards by the little spark in her basket. It was the big day: caster in her basket, wind in her hair, and a huge hill to cycle up at the end of it all—but right now, the ground was flat, and she was skimming like a dragonfly. And whatever Will had done to their bike, it wasn't doing much for them. She began to pull ahead: two more corners, a straight-away down Kent, and then it was the uphill slog to contend with. The traffic lights flickered amber; no-go, if she cut through the new pedestrian route, though, she could shave off some seconds, assuming there wasn't much foot traffic. She threw out an arm to indicate, hopped over the gutter, and glanced back to where Will had overshot the corner and was struggling to turn their lead-weight of a machine. She didn't even notice the figure as it swung the bat into her front tyre.

Her head. It was digging into the corner of the native planters. Her face felt sticky and hot and _ow_ , the pain, pain pain pain, like a toothache if the tooth was her entire skull. Her helmet had shattered like a piñata. A silhouette moved jerkily into her blurry field of vision. It was carrying something heavy, rhythmically lifting and tapping it back on one shoulder, and in its other hand was the RANGI caster.

Julia cursed every star she had and a few others besides. Clutching her raw palms, she curled onto her side, moving slowly, trying to hold back the rolling nausea that turned her stomach. Pressing forehead to palm, she began, slowly, to edge backwards. Then she heard Will's voice behind her. "Oi! Capitalist!" The figure glanced up for a second and then bolted. A gust of wind and Will disappeared after them, their bike _pingping THUNK pingping THUNK_ -ing all the way.  
"Wait!" Julia's head hurt even to yell. "Will, stop!"  
She tried to get up and nearly planted back onto the pavement. Where were her feet? Her brain felt like it was spinning in her skull.

Warm hands caught her weight and guided her onto the concrete. Julia felt the bottom of her world give out. She had to get after the thief, but all her fight was dissipating in the absence of the ability to be vertical. Fuck, her head hurt. There was aspirin in her backpack, and maybe a few mils of water, and her cell phone, and she'd need to call the project lead. And who was this now? A medic's cross sewn to a denim jacket, coloured half black and half rich red, with the white koru between. Four pairs of brown eyes swam in front of her face, and she had to clamp her eyes shut to cut off the nausea. It was easier than expected.

"Shit," she managed. "Really. A pus-filled plague on that one and their whole deal."

The kindly figure sat down next to her. "But your mate on the bike's pretty quick, eh. No sweat, catching that guy." They held up a blurry shape that, if she squinted, appeared to be a hand with roughly eight fingers. "How many?"

"Two," Julia lied through gritted teeth.

Medic (a moniker picked at random) shook their head. "Yeah, nah, bro, you're staying right here. Anyways, you're bleeding. Oi, wait, you gotta sit down!"

"Can't. Have to text Park," Julia said, swaying. "Lost item policy." Then she caught a glance at Medic's face, and the earnest expression in their brown eyes, and paused a second longer than she'd meant to.

Medic made a distressed noise in the back of their throat, something between a trill and a sigh, which made Julia's heart do something even stranger. _I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy._  
"Sounds like a load of bougie CO 2 if you ask me," they finally added, handing her the backpack—and there was something almost jovial in the suggestion. Julia shot them a relieved grin. So, maybe not the best _medic_ , but a good person. That seemed more important.

The sound of Will yelling broke the moment. Julia glanced up—ow—to see the figure scrambling from vertical garden to vertical garden, the caster clutched tightly in one hand. They were wearing a head-to-toe protective mesh, the kind favoured by rich kids who could afford the frankly hilarious tax on motorcycles—and for a carbon suck, they moved pretty fast.

Julia almost didn't see them—her! The pronouns were pinned opposite the cross, she'd been too dizzy to notice—almost didn't see her move, she was so fast. Medic snapped some fasteners on her left shoulder, hefted the chlorophyll-green prosthetic, and then hurled it just above the climbing figure's head. It snapped off one of the browning ferns and, in so doing, knocked loose the ascendant thief—and the caster.

They hit the ground with a crunch, and Julia's stomach clenched—but as they were already getting up, the crash padding in the suit having done its job, it was more born of indignant rage than anything else. (The prosthetic had not come back to earth: its last act had been to grip onto a pikopiko and hold fast.)

"Oi, thief! Why don't you pick on someone in your own pay-grade?" Medic strode over where the figure was reaching to pick up the dented black case. The expression on her face was incandescent. Some people have a gift for that specific quality of righteousness: it comes as naturally to them as breathing. Medic had a gift.

One gloved hand lashed out; Medic stepped back quickly but raised her fists. Oh no. Oh, this was fighting, anger was one thing but a genuine bonafide fight? The thief moved like fire on a slick. Julia's preferred weapon was a keyboard, taking pot-shots at climate change-denying morons commenting on the _Sunflower_ 's articles. There was a violence in that black shape that it hurt just to look at.

"Will! Where are you?" she yelled, as the figure swung the case hard at Medic's knees. Medic took advantage, trying to catch the figure around the shoulder and bring them the rest of the way down, but they caught her wrist and pulled her sideways, unbalancing her, while fluidly unsheathing the bat and swinging it high. The approaching _pingping THUNK pingping THUNK_ was getting louder. Will was astride their machine again, but parts of it had been unfolded and others untaped and re-taped into new exciting configurations. The solar stained-glass sides had been re-folded into defensive shields; the huge lamp on the front was blinding to look at, and they were making, of all things, train noises.  
"Woo-woo! Coming through!" Will sang, and as the two combatants leaped out of the way, Will snatched the caster out of the thief's hands. "Thank-you! All aboard!" They reached out the other hand for Medic, who swung up behind, feet on the batteries, clutching Will's shoulders.

Steering with their knees, they swerved out of the figure's reach. "Julia! Handlebars!"  
Oh god oh no oh hell. Will had one hand out; Medic leaned her weight on them and reached with the other, and Julia jumped onto the front of the bike. Hands pulled her up; she pretzelled herself getting situated, and then blanched. "Right! Hard right! Will!"   
"Be my eyes!" Will shrieked, laughing, as they narrowly clipped the wall and turned back out into the street.

Julia glanced back just once. The figure was standing over her old single-speed with its crumpled front wheel. They gave it a kick, and that was the last she saw, as the three of them pulled away into the street noise.

Into the perpetual heat again, the bustle of traffic, the near-absence of pedestrians, the black-coffee tang of an over-caffeinated, under-watered city. Julia breathed a sigh of relief, focusing very hard on not stealing glances over her shoulder.

"Hey, uh, nice to meet you both," Medic piped up. "Just curious, how far are we going?"  
"Yeah, good question," Will added with a grin Julia could hear. "Julia, where are we going?"  
"We're taking that caster to the top of Tangi Te Keo." She glanced back at their new ally. "That's not too far, right?"  
"Nah," and it sounded like she was smiling, but Julia couldn't be sure. She swallowed hard and added, as quickly as she could, "And thank-you. You didn't have to do any of that." Let alone for people you'd not even really met yet.  
Medic sounded like she was looking around. "You're sweet, but yeah, yeah I did."

Julia felt her ears get red. "Uh, thank-you." Then she inhaled sharply. "Oh, and we'll—Will, we can take her back after, to get her arm back, right?"  
Medic and Will laughed, though she suspected for different reasons. "The train'll depart T.T.K. whenever you like, Ms—?"  
"Kauri," she supplied. "Will? Julia?"  
"They and she, respectively," Will said.

Julia was busy turning over the name in her mind. Kauri, of course. It was one of the most beautiful trees, in danger of extinction (so was everything) in spite of everyone's best efforts to save it (ditto), just because a bunch of people from overseas thought in the hand was better than in the bush (familiar as well). She liked kauri. And Kauri was pretty good too.

"So d'you get jumped by corporate thugs a lot?" Kauri asked.  
"No, usually people give Julia a pretty wide berth," Will was saying, as they turned onto the steep uphill. Most of the pines had been cleared out for housing a few years ago, with the housing crisis showing no signs of slowing, so their route passed twenty or so identical 'modern' flats, all in white and grey. The bike began making more urgent _pingTHUNKpingTHUNKpingTHUNK_ noises, protesting the change in grade, and probably also the sort of people who rented out three houses instead of just living in one big one, like rich people used to. "She's a _journalist_ ," they added, in a stage whisper, and Julia poked her tongue out at them.  
" _Volunteer writer_. Part time. Oooh, what a terrifying exposé on community gardens!"  
Kauri didn't laugh with them. "Seriously though. They want your plastic box so badly, they send a guy to rough you up for it?"  
Julia hadn't really wanted to think about it; keeping her friends out of harm's way had seemed more important at the time, and it didn't seem unreasonable that that would be worth more than a juicy story. Still, the suit and scifi-looking bat had been unpleasantly distinctive.  
"The thing about corporations is that they can afford to hire people who look like anyone and can do anything they want." She shrugged uncomfortably. "At least this one just had a baton."  
Kaori's voice darkened, though this time Julia wasn't so keen to look around. "And they can only afford one guy?" The thought weighed on her a little. North Courtenay, the most populated road, had been closed, which was the reason she'd taken the route less travelled at all. But still—how many alleys between central a-Tara and the mountain? Had there been one on every street?

Will, panting, finally cycled them into a grassy roadside patch near the top of the hill. The pines had been cut down here to make way for natives; Julia and Will had come out here last year with the planting team. They were still tiny wee things, brittle and stunted by heat and drought. It made her angry. All that white, clouded sky, not thick enough for rain, just enough to catch the heat. The wind was picking up, but the sky couldn't change.

"That's your drop-off, right, Julia?" Will managed between breaths, pointing at four loose-clothed figures standing by the monument. Julia checked her phone for the time. 12:01. She was late, and the thought was crushing. Even if she didn't get that 5-minute-advance bonus payment, at least she was here. She would live. Probably.

She hopped off the handlebars and gratefully took the caster from Will, glancing at the pair of them. She probably couldn't get in any more trouble, and they had saved her job, and maybe something more important, today. Kauri was curious, and Will needed a break, and she was so grateful to both of them. RANGI would understand, she hoped, if everything she'd read was true.

"You guys want to come?" she asked, apprehensively.

She needn't have worried. Will let out a breathless "woo!", before collapsing off the bike, and Kauri's eyes lit up.

Together, the three figures ascended the stairs. At their approach, the group of 'tourists' by the railing began to unpeel camera bags and retrieve barometers, radio transmitters, GPS trackers—a thousand gadgets and screens that Julia didn't recognise—and hooking them up, like they'd done this a thousand times before. Her heart began to beat faster. This was it. This was happening.

The figures in blue, up close, were clearly just wearing whatever blue things they'd been able to find in their wardrobes—mostly jeans, a denim jacket or two; one grey-haired Polynesian figure was wearing a blue dress patterned with white flowers. She recognised one of them immediately. "Park!"  
He smiled and signed, "We were getting worried. Who are these folk?" Kauri was looking curiously, but Will was bouncing excitedly on the balls of their feet and openly gawping at the people working.  
Julia blushed. "Will and Kauri," she signed, the caster tucked under one arm. "They got me out of a pretty tough scrape."

Park waved at both of them, and Will waved back; Kauri signed a more formal hello. Neither of them seemed terribly sure what was happening—what was happening, right! She handed Park the caster. "Present and accounted for, and only a little late."

Park hefted the device in one hand, feeling the weight. "It took us _so long_ to find someone selling these, you have no idea. Thanks, Julia." He handed it to the one in the dress, who held it aloft as they strode over, delighted, to show it to the scientists; a few dropped what they were doing and rushed to incorporate it into the nest of cables and transmitters. Will's hand clamped onto Julia's shoulder. "Oh my god, Julia, this is really happening, I didn't think we'd get to actually _see_ —we do actually—" they became flustered, "that is, do we actually get to see?"

Julia asked. Park nodded, eyes glittering. "We don't usually get an audience. This'll be a nice change."

RANGI. Bringing the rain where it could no longer go; drawing the right combination of pressure, humidity and temperature together. Rain for the browning ferns in the wall gardens; rain for the stunted trees; rain to purge the forests and the cracked riverbeds. And suddenly Julia realised that she could feel it. That pressure she'd missed for so long, a cool smell blowing in with the breeze.

Kauri, next to her, pointed at the hills on the horizon, across the flat grey-green mirror of the harbour. "Are those clouds getting darker?"

Julia almost laughed out loud. It was coming, they could see it now, a wave of dark grey on the horizon: a storm, a storm, a storm. Will was crouched over the workers, peppering them with questions Julia didn't understand and being responded to with answers that were doubly arcane. She glanced at Kauri, whose face was perfectly framed against the lightest part of the sky.

"Makes sense," Kauri said thoughtfully, as a crack of distant thunder rolled over the hills. "If I made money off owning the water, I'd get fairly pissed with people who could make it rain."

Julia resisted all the things she wanted to do and instead said, "And if no-one else knew that, I might not be worried about where it rained. I might not put too much investment in stopping that."

"I'd have other chances to ruin people's lives, take what they had."

Julia glanced at Kauri, and grinned wryly. "Sounds like a load of bougie CO2, if you ask me."  
Kauri laughed, a hollow sound, and the two of them leaned on the railing behind them and watched the sky darken, felt the coolest breeze anyone had felt in years. And it was just as Kauri's shoulder brushed hers that Julia felt a single, cool drop on her forehead. Petrichor and trees and anarchy.

The sky opened, and it felt like the rain would fall forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: _"Delivery cyclist races through the city to deliver an item in time for an important event."_  
>  For the [Solarpunk Story Exchange](https://solarpunkstoryexchange.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> It's very late. Oh god, I'm so sorry.


End file.
